When you have your mobile phone with you but don’t want to use your data, what do you usually do? You search for a free and open WiFi connection, and if such is located, you don’t think twice and just connect to it. Does this sound familiar to you? Hvis ja, du kan være i problemer. Og her er hvorfor.

Have you heard about Mobile World Congress? It is an annual event taking place in Barcelona. During this year’s edition (februar 22-25), an interesting discovery was presented by Avast. The well-known antiv, has conducted an interesting experiment.

Avast’s Experiment

During the experiment, three open WiFi networks were set up. The whole scenario happens near the Mobile World Congress registration booth located at the Barcelona airport.

To make things more believable, the WiFi sports were named with ‘standard names’ likeStarbucks, MWC Free WiFi, og Airport_Free_Wifi_AENA.

Hvad skete der?In less than 4 timer, løbet 2,000 brugere, mostly Mobile World Congress attendees, connected to the three wireless hotspots. Naturligvis, users weren’t concerned at all with any security-related issues that may come from connecting to random WiFi networks. Men, “With most Mobile World Congress visitors traveling from abroad, it’s not surprising to see that many opt to connect to free Wi-Fi in order to save money, instead of using data roaming services“, as pointed out by G. Singh, president of mobile at Avast.

Not only were Avast researchers trying to prove a point. They also wanted to show how easy it would be to hack a public wireless. And they did. The team snooped on the three spots’ traffic and disclosed some intriguing results:

50.1 percent had an Apple device, 43.4 percent had an Android device, 6.5 percent had an Windows Phone device

61.7 percent searched information on Google or checked their emails on Gmail

Så, the logical question is what to do to retain some level of security while using free WiFi spots. Avast, among other security software vendors, recommend users to install and run a mobile VPN service whenever using the Web via public WiFi. Næste gang, either do that or just wait until you get access to a safer network.Share with us, do you use public WiFi?